The
Review!
Welcome
to the rambling thoughts of a mad man. Being the first review I have ever
written (and successfully finished!), this will more than likely turn out to be
a big bucket of thoughts rather than the well constructed reviews you are
probably used to reading! Here goes anyway!
Gears of
War: Judgement is a prequel to the original trilogy, taking place 15 years
before the events of Gears of War 1. The Cogs have just won the war the
Pendulum War (a worldwide civil war on their home planet of Sera), and the
Locust are completely unheard of. Unlike the previous games which feature
Marcus Fenix as the always cross, thick necked protagonist, this latest game
follows Damon Baird. Veterans of the previous games will know Baird already as
the "sarcastic one from the first 3 games". I have to admit I was
apprehensive about this before playing the game, but the absence of Marcus has
no impact on the game at all, and if anything, Baird's maverick style of
leadership is a lot more fun to watch play out. I'm avoiding spoilers here, but
you'll certainly learn why Baird no longer has his own squad by the time we
first meet him in Gears 1. Augustus Cole also makes a return, along with two
new characters.
So is
this game radically different to the rest of the franchise? No, it really
isn't, so if you don't like shooting the hell out of the Locust and
occasionally hacking them in half with a chainsaw blade then you probably won't
like this game either. If you did enjoy the original games however and you want
more, this game is right up your street! Like the rest of the franchise, the
game is split out into a campaign and multiplayer. The line between the two is
becoming slowly more blurry as I will go on to explain.....
The campaign
is set up a little differently than past incarnations of Gears of War games. We
are still told a story and we still get pushed along from firefight to
firefight, but this time the story is split out into bite size chunks. Each one
of these chunks includes two or three of encounters with the Locust and at the
end you get a score in the form of one to three stars. Yes this is very Angry
Birds I know, but it does give the campaign far more replay value as you try
new ways to get the maximum number of stars. Each level also has its own
"Declassified Mission" which when accepted, alters the level to make
it more challenging, but conversely allows you to get three stars more easily.
These missions vary from making the enemies more challenging, applying time
limits, restricting weapons that can be used etc and do make the game more
interesting to play. On harder difficulties you do find yourself wondering how
wise taking on a declassified mission will be!
One of
the better improvements to the game is the new additions that have been added
to the Cog (and Locust) arsenal that are well worth mentioning. The Markza (a
personal favourite of mine) is a semi-automatic rifle that fills the middle
ground between the painfully slow reloading of the Longshot and the short range
of pretty much every other weapon in the game. There is also a new grenade
launcher style weapon call the Booshka which takes some practice to use but is
also a lot of fun. Along with a couple of other additions, it feels like then
variety of weapons is much better suited to this sort of game and allows for
more variation in how you play, especially in co-op mode.
Speaking
of co-op play, the campaign on multiplayer also allows for a little friendly
competition in the form of end of level scoreboards. So everyone can try to get
the most kills, head shots and such. This makes the whole game far more fun
with a few mates online if you don't fancy the playing verses other humans in
multiplayer land!
The
multiplayer side of the game includes the expected free-for-all and team death
match modes of course (for all you traditionalists out there!), a survival
mode, and an all new Overrun Mode. Now I remember playing Hoard mode and Beast
mode on Gears of war 3 and thinking "Wouldn't this be great if your we're
able to combine the two". Well Overrun mode is exactly that. Rather than
playing as the Cogs against waves of computer controlled Locust (à la Hoard mode) or playing as lots of Locust creatures
against computer controlled Cogs (in my beloved Beast mode!) you get to play
against real people controlling each side. So does it work? Just about. It's a
fun mode to play, but feels like a cut down version of its predecessors and is
very restrictive (less beasts on the hoard side than you would expect and very
specific load outs on the Cogs side). It's clear the developers were trying to
ensure the game remained balanced, but somehow it just feels like you are being
forced to play in certain ways. You also have to take turns on what side you
are on, which can be annoying if you would rather stick with good guys or bad
guys. Now that all sounded very negative so I should clarify that it is a fun
mode to play, just not as good as Hoard or Beast. Which brings me on to my
final gripe with the game - Hoard and Beast modes are not even present! This
feels like a massive failure to me and hopefully something that will be
resolved in future DLC.
The Verdict
Gears of
War: Judgement falls short of what it could have been, I don't think anyone
will deny that, but it is still an excellent quality game that deserves the
time of anyone who has a liking for the original games and wants to gun down a
few more Locust during the end days of the Xbox 360.
Unlike a
lot of games that get pumped out by developers these days, the user interface
is flawless, in game glitches are rare, and I have never had to wait to get
into a multiplayer game. These things might all sound like the basics, but far
too many games fail in one of these areas and make the experience far more jarring
than it should be. There is a lot to be said about getting the basics right.
If you
want a game that is fun, has loads of replay value and achieved what it set out
to do, this is it. It's not a game that will change the world, but it is worth
your time and you could do a lot worse! *cough* Dead Space 3 *cough*
- Jason
SCORE
8/10
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